What makes a happy life?
This fall, The Globe and Mail set out to answer this question by asking Canadians to send in the names of the happiest person they know. Across the country, friends, family and co-workers responded with more than a hundred nominations – young and old, from a range of backgrounds and professions, living in cities and small towns across the country.
They included an almost-priest-turned-principal in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.; a farmer in Milford, Ont.; a nature-lover with a pet mule in rural Manitoba; a marathon runner in Winnipeg; an 80-year-old professional mime in Hagersville, Ont.; a Toronto social-skills trainer; a Vancouver data scientist; and an emergency room doctor in London.
The happiest people, according to the submissions, were quick to laugh and slow to complain. Their lives were not perfect: collectively they’d face divorce, job losses, illness and the death of loved ones. But to the people who admired them, they were examples of resilience and generosity - and often their first stop for wise words.
So we reached out to some of them to ask about their definition of a happy life. How do they cultivate it? What advice would they have for those of us seeking to elevate our own sense of well-being?
As New Year’s resolutions go, their suggestions cost little or nothing. They don’t require counting calories or new gym memberships.
But, adopting even just one, as this group of happy Canadians suggest, might help any of us flourish.
1. Stay curious about the people you love
Kat Jovey, while visiting her Gran and painting their nails to match. 'After this I read her fairytales until she fell asleep. It was a great day,' she says, the kind of fun 'that costs almost nothing and creates these beautiful moments.'Kat Jovey/Supplied
In a world popping with pings, Kat Jovey, a 38-year-old social-skills trainer at a Toronto tech company, never pulls out her phone when she’s talking to a friend. Instead, she makes a habit of listening closely to their words, and paying attention to their body language and the tone of their voice. When she asks questions, she gives space for the answer.
“Choosing to be with someone in the moment is respectful,” she says. “I feel like I get closer to understanding this person in front of me. Those are the best relationships I have.”
This focused concentration and openness pays dividends, for this group of Canadians had also collected one of the most important ingredients for a happy life: close friends and family. The best evidence: they have someone who not only considered them the “happiest person they know,” but also wanted the rest of the country to know it.
2. Say hello to strangers
Ms. Jovey’s attention isn’t reserved for friends. While waiting for repairs at a tire shop recently, she looked up from reading her book to see an older man who’d been staring intently at his car. “It looks like you’re looking at your baby,” she joked. “Is she gonna be ok?” He quipped back, “She’s getting new boots.” They spoke for 30 minutes about food and travel, and a dull wait became an interesting conversation.
“There are so many opportunities to connect with people,” Ms. Jovey says. That week, she’d told a woman wearing a fuzzy pink coat that she looked “amazing.” And asked a frazzled barista making her latte, “How are you?” (Avoid opening with the weather, she advised. Nobody wants to have the same rote exchange on repeat.)
She never did learn the name of the man at the tire store, but she left with three new restaurant recommendations. “If I hadn’t made a little joke, that never would have happened.”
3. Take pleasure in achieving small goals
Mingdi Zhao was happily enjoying the beauty of nature on top of Manitoba's Brandon Hills, at the Race the North Face trail run. Happiness is not about winning the race, she says, or achieving perfection. 'It's about creating a life that aligns with your own values and finding joy in the present moment.'Mingdi Zhao/Supplied
Mingdi Zhao, 56, a teacher and marathon runner, has a friend who weeps in frustration if she doesn’t beat her personal best at the end of a race. Ms. Zhao likes a good result as well. But for her, the official marathon is only the finish-line celebration of a journey with many small, valuable parts: training with friends as the sun rises, persevering through a blizzard, feeling satisfaction that she is a year older and still running strong.
Obsessing about the final result distracts you from joy, she says. Fail, and you overlook resilience as the true prize. By appreciating the many steps in a daunting task, the Grade 9 math teacher says, the distance feels shorter, the job more manageable. Ms. Zhao adopts this approach at school as well. If students have been restless all day, she takes pleasure in the one who solved a difficult math problem. If she works with a student who has been chronically absent, and they show up only in the morning, she doesn’t dwell on the empty desk in the afternoons. “In this way, you find balance.”
At the end of a race or close of a day, Ms. Zhao says, you will see that you have worked hard to do a hard thing.
Her perspective was echoed by many of the people interviewed, who rarely mentioned achievements or material possessions when talking about happiness, focusing instead on humble, everyday moments of beauty, connection and self-awareness. “I never wanted to win the gold medal,” says Tom Bonic, an 81-year-old, now-retired school principal. “I just wanted to be fully alive.”
4. Forgive others – and yourself
Vicki Emlaw, third from the left, with her daughter and ex-partner at her farm, Vicki’s Veggies. Ms. Emlaw made a deliberate practice of restoring her happiness, including forgiving herself and her ex for their relationship ending. 'I decided that I was just going to follow my joy and do all of the things that I love.'Vicki Emlaw/Supplied
For five years, Vicki Emlaw, a 54-year-old vegetable farmer outside Milford, Ont., stewed in her own anger. She avoided parties so she didn’t have to be in the same room with her ex and his new partner, who had once been a close girlfriend. When her ex showed up at her father’s funeral, she could only think about how much she wanted him to leave.
Her rage was isolating; they all live in a small town with a shared social circle. For a time, she gave up gardening, the activity she loved most, because it was connected to the farm she and her ex had operated together during their 16-year relationship. “Nothing was bringing me joy,” she says, “absolutely nothing.”
Something had to change. She attended yoga retreats and well-being workshops. She learned to “stalk her thoughts from negative to positive.” She made a habit of deliberately asking herself what choices would deliver the most happiness in that moment. Watching a cheerful rom-com or exercising? A cookie or a salad? Each time she allowed herself to choose the option she truly desired, she learned what joy felt like again.
She also knew that to really be happy again, she needed to resolve the lingering anger about her former relationship. One of her teachers told her that to forgive others, she had to first forgive herself. So she concentrated on silencing negative thoughts for a kinder, internal dialogue. And she rewrote her version of events into a more honest and understanding narrative.
It took many months, but slowly, she felt the tension ease. One day, she found herself in the same room with her ex and her former friend, and the hostility she’d felt was completely gone. “I felt lighter,” she recalls, “like I was floating.”
Vicki Emlaw at her farm with her daughter, Sage, posing with a cut-out facsimile of herself and her giant heirloom tomato. 'I send so much intention with everything I do,' she says.Vicki Emlaw/Supplied
Today, Ms. Emlaw has her own farm, Vicki’s Veggies. She grows dozens of different heirloom tomatoes, her favourite crop, and has a vegetable stand by the road where passersby take what they want and pay on an honour system. “I put this little bubble around my farm,” she says, “with the intention of anyone arriving there to be trustworthy and feel joyful.” Visitors, she says, rise to her expectations – just as she rose to her own.
She and her current boyfriend attended last year’s Christmas Party hosted by her ex, and they’ve celebrated their daughter’s birthday together. She now considers the four of them friends.
Ms. Emlaw recently attended a talk by Fred Luskin, the director of Stanford’s Forgiveness Project. She read back a line she wrote down at the time: “Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.” That’s her secret: she stopped digging up the past, and learned to savour today’s bounty. Her tomatoes have never tasted better.
5. Spend time with your own thoughts
Kelly Regan, a recently retired ER doctor, finds calm after a choatic day by swimming, but never counting, laps in the pool. 'It makes me feel like I’m honouring myself.'Kelly Regan/Supplied
Kelly Regan’s thinking place is the swimming pool. For decades, the daily soundtrack for the 65-year-old emergency department doctor in London, Ont., has been a cacophony: boisterous kids at home, constant listening and talking and giving orders at the hospital. But swimming laps is silent and rhythmic.
“It makes me feel like I’m honouring myself,” says Dr. Regan, who retired from the emergency department in December, but will continue working part time. Even at the pool, there was always work waiting, a problem that needed solving. In the water, she set it aside. By quieting her mind, a solution often emerged on its own. “I always come out with a new thought,” she says.
6. Build up your happiness with practice
Gabrielle Foss climbing near Squamish, B.C., over the Cheakamus River. 'My happiest self spends just as much time adventuring outside as I do at work,' she says. 'I find the movement of climbing very playful and childlike. Nature is like an adult jungle gym.'Gabrielle Foss/Supplied
“Happiness doesn’t fall on your lap,” Ms. Emlaw observes, speaking from experience. “You have to work for it.”
Like her, most of the group invested time learning ways to increase their well-being and contentment – through therapy, workshops, or deliberate practice, such as gratitude journalling, exercise and mindfulness
Jo-Anne Liburd, 54, a communications consultant for non-profits in Toronto, gives thanks in her nightly prayers, and thinks consciously about self-compassion: “I’ve tried to give myself the same kind of grace that I would give other people.” Gabrielle Foss, 27, the executive director of the Cansbridge student fellowship in Vancouver, goes for runs to sort and settle “the inputs” of the day. Ms. Jovey, the tire-store socializer, meditates and schedules “do nothing” time once a week in her calendar to guarantee a few quiet hours on her own.
The group had also acquired healthy practices by learning from their earliest happiness mentors. They spoke of mothers who took life in stride, fathers who welcomed strangers to the dinner table, and irrepressible grandparents. (And also how, in some cases, having unhappy parents, had taught them what not to do.)
Jo-Anne Liburd finds happiness by embracing fun and novelty, on her own terms. 'Comparing your life to other people is the death of happiness,' she says. 'Life is messy. Everyone has their own journey.'Jo-Anne Liburd/Supplied
Ms. Liburd, for instance, was raised by a single mom who left Saint Kitts for Canada when Ms. Liburd was three years old. “It was a scrappy upbringing. She worked hard but we had to move a lot,” she says. “That built a resilience in me to roll with things.”
They described happiness as being like exercise – the more often you practice, the better you get at feeling it. Even so, while most of the group considered themselves happy people, they also described experiencing their share of anger, sadness, as well as anxiety about the state of the world. Their happiness practices are acts of resistance that stop them from spiraling into those negative feelings.
Ms. Foss, who lost her father to cancer when she was in third-year university, worked with a counsellor to learn how to embrace, not suppress, emotions such as sadness and anger; along with her running to release tension, she throws rocks in the woods or wrings out a towel. Confronted with hostility or injustice, Dr. Regan, the swimmer, responded with kindness, and occasionally surreptitious defiance. When hospital rules forbade her giving food or blankets to homeless patients sleeping in the hallways, she’d fetch sandwiches from the fridge and hand them out anyway.
7. Find your happy place
'To me, happiness is being in nature,' says Karin Hurst, who savours the easy company of her dogs, a mule named Monty and her horse, Baltic. 'When you go up to a horse, and just cuddle, it gives you inner peace.'Karin Hurst/Supplied
Karin Hurst was only supposed to be in Canada for a year. A 21, she’d left a large family in Denmark and flown to Winnipeg to work as a nurse. “It was three in the afternoon,” she recalls, of the January day she stepped off the plane. The cold was a shock. “But the sky was like a lilac blue and the sun was shining and I thought I’m going to love it here.”
After a couple weeks, however, she left her job as a nurse after her lack of English proved both stressful and isolating, and accepted a position as a hostess at a hotel. She loved the job, and not only because the place was frequented by celebrities, such as Jane Fonda and Christopher Plummer.
After a year in Canada, she knew she was never going back to Denmark. She had a dog then, and a horse. It would take another ten years to meet her husband, a landscape artist who called her “a dumpling with apple cheeks” when they first met – an observation that made her decidedly unhappy. But he won her over with his fearlessness the first time he got on a horse. Around the same time, she stopped crying when she heard the Danish national anthem.
Eventually, they settled on a quiet piece of land in Oakbank, Man., where they live simply, respecting the wildlife around them and caring for a collection of animals, including Monty the mule.
These days, the 74-year-old weeps when she hears O Canada. At the words “strong and free,” she says, “I’m a goner.” She found her place and flourished there.
8. Don’t be afraid to knock on a new door
Tom Bonic at the Paris Orly Airport after working for six months with Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity, caring for people with leprosy. The experience affirmed his values, he says, and taught him humility: two important ingredients for happiness.Thomas Bonic/Supplied
Sitting outside her home in Calcutta, Mother Teresa held Tom Bonic’s hand. After 10 years of studying to become a Jesuit priest in Toronto, Mr. Bonic, 30, was considering walking away. Many of his professors were progressive, but he was struggling with the socially conservative teachings of the Roman Catholic church. And he was realizing he wanted to fall in love and have a family.
He’d travelled to Calcutta without a clear plan, hoping to volunteer with the Sisters of Charity, which is how he found himself on a bench outside a modest, grey house, describing his search for purpose to one of the the most famous spiritual leaders in the world. “How do you know how to serve in this world?” he asked. He never forgot the answer: “Work really hard to get in touch with your deepest desire,” Mother Teresa told him. “If you do that, you’ll know which way to go.”
For seven months, he cared for a community of people with leprosy, cleaning their sores each morning in the river. Shortly after he returned to Canada, he quit the priesthood, and stepped into the void, as he called it, of not knowing his next steps.
Tom Bonic worried as a young man that he would never find love, until he met Jackie while filling in as as plus-one at a wedding. They’ve been together for 50 years, and now have two daughters, a pair of son-in-laws and three grandchildren. A healthy relationship, he says, requires first knowing yourself and your core values.Thomas Bonic/Supplied
“It was tearing me apart because I thought, ‘I’ve got no boundaries anymore. I’m out of control. What good can I actually do?’” He landed a job as a project manager at a construction company, and met his future wife, Jackie. But with time, he realized that his deepest desire would not be found in the corporate world, and that some of his early mentors had been right: he wanted to became a teacher who taught children to know their value and be kind.
A few weeks after retiring in 2013, Mr. Bonic, who’s now 81, was pacing the Philosopher’s Walk, a tree-lined footpath at the University of Toronto, and suddenly found himself weeping. “Why are they there?” he asked himself about his tears.
He’d been reflecting on the panicky nights, as a boy, when he thought he would flunk out of school and embarrass his family. And about how, at 30, he abandoned what he believed was his life’s purpose. He’d felt so awkward around women that he doubted he’d find someone. How he was rejected nine times before landing the principal’s job, mostly for being too eccentric. And yet, because he made the painful and terrifying decision to close one wrong door and knock on another, it had all worked out. The reason for his tears that day, he realized, was gratitude.
9. Share your happiness
James Ince found his joy performing as Dr. Bandoli, his comedy-theatre alter ego. Encourage your inner child, Mr. Ince says, but be kind with your humour. 'Find a way to make people happy and laugh, without putting people down. Lift them up.'Supplied
Here’s one way to find your life’s calling: run off to Paris, and train with Jacques Lecoq, one of the most famous mimes in the world. In the 1960s, James Ince, a talented, varsity-level gymnast at Louisiana State University, found himself enrolled in the competitive École internationale de théâtre, studying physical theatre on a friend’s recommendation, and a whim.
Growing up, his theatrical mother created a facade of happiness over a family ruled by a strict military father, and he was determined to live with joy in a way his parents had not been able to do. Those years in France revealed his path, and his alter-ego; he launched a travelling comedy show as Dr. Bandoli, and his “theatre of joy, energy and intelligence” toured the United States, Canada and Europe. His act included a squawking rubber chicken and a trampoline for performing flips. And he reveled in telling tales, tall and true, with the audience’s enthusiastic participation.
But applause wasn’t the fulfilling part, he says, speaking from his son’s home in Hagersville, Ont., where he is currently staying. He loved making people laugh, on stage and off.
“I’d put two and two together,” the 80-year-old says. “Happiness comes from making others happy.”
10. When life is painful, maintain perspective. Today is not tomorrow
Ken Conroy with daughter, Éabha, and wife, Doireann, in Vancouver. Mr. Conroy's daughter was born in 2020, the same year he was diagnosed with an incurable cancer that is treatable, though for how long isn't known. 'For me, having a kid just boosted happiness like tenfold overnight,' he says. 'You can't package that joy.'Kenneth Conroy/Supplied
“What can you do but laugh?” Ken Conroy says, recalling his truly horrible year.
In 2020, severe back pain turned out to be a tumour in his spine, and, at age 35, Mr. Conroy, a data scientist in Port Moody, B.C., was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare and aggressive cancer that usually only appears in children. A few weeks later, his wife became pregnant with their first child. Then, in March, the pandemic closed down the world, and delayed the surgery meant to save his life.
Weeks later, while getting money out of a bank machine, he realized he couldn’t stand on his tippy toes, and he was admitted to the nearly empty spinal injury unit. The surgery that followed left him unable to properly use his left leg. Five weeks of rehab got him walking again. Then came alternative weeks of hospital stays for chemo. His daughter was born that fall, luckily during an off week, but he had to leave his new family days later for another round of treatment.
But he’s not much for wallowing. Bad news can be a shock, he says, but “you’re going to be happier the further along that path you go than at the beginning.” Today doesn’t define tomorrow, unless you let it.
Kenneth Conroy with childhood friends on a Christmas trip home to Ireland. 'My default answer to anything social is pretty much, 'yes,'' Mr. Conroy says. 'I'm looking for every opportunity to have great experiences.'Kenneth Conroy/Supplied
For a couple years, the cancer went quiet. But then a small tumour returned in a new spot in his spine, requiring more treatment. Then this year, a third one appeared in his brain. Mr. Conroy’s cancer, he knows now, is incurable, but treatable, though for how long no one can say.
And yet, he says, “There is always something that could be worse.” He could get hit by a bus, and not have a chance to say goodbye. He could be alone, without a loving family or the three childhood friends flying to Vancouver for St. Patrick’s Day to see him. He could have been born decades earlier, when there was no treatment at all.
“It makes it easier to navigate life if you believe that bad days are temporary,” Mr. Conroy says. No one is happy all the time, he added, “but you can be pretty happy by accepting the way things come in life and adapting to them over time.” For him, finding joy even when days are grim, means saying: “This is the way it is. Let’s make the most of it.”
11. Pay attention to the view
Karin Hurst with her 'favourite person,' her husband, with whom she lives simply, taking up as small a footprint as she can while enjoying nature and her animals.Karin Hurst/Supplied
“I don’t have a phone,” Ms. Hurst says, “because I like to look up.”
The retired nurse and hotel worker from Denmark also doesn’t have a dishwasher or washing machine – not because she can’t afford them, but because without them the environment will pay a smaller price for her existence. Each day, she stands at her kitchen sink, with hands in warm, soapy water, watching the birds and deer go by through the window. We don’t take enough time, she says, to quietly admire nature.
She lives simply with her husband, taking up as small a footprint as she can, finding joy in the morning cardinal, her frolicking dogs, the afternoons when her mule, Monty, lays his heavy head on her lap. She’s stopped riding, so her horse also spends the days as congenial company. Being mindful about our connection to the natural world teaches humans humility, she says, and reminds us that we are all equal animals in a connected ecosystem.
Only then, she suggests, can we assume a more respectful and purposeful place in the environment, and see how many small acts can make a difference. When she feels anxiety about climate, she leans on a parable first told by the Quechuan people of South America, about a hummingbird who’s trying to put out a forest fire one drop of water at time.
A bear comes along, and asks, “What’s that going to do?” And the hummingbird answers, “I am doing what I can.” When the world’s problems are overwhelming, Ms. Hurst advises, take solace in being a persistent hummingbird.
12. Be shamelessly silly. Dance. Sing. Blow bubbles
Ms. Liburd has tried polo on horses and sky-diving, but one of her power moves is that she’s always the first on the dance floor. People, she says, 'will watch you for five seconds, and then somebody else will join you. And before you know it, the dance floor will be full.'Jo-Anne Liburd/Supplied
In September, Ms. Liburd proudly swathed a friend’s backyard in red and white balloons and Canada flags, and hosted a party to celebrate her 50 years in her adopted country. When she sent out the invitations, a recipient joked, “You will find any reason to celebrate.” That’s true, she says, laughing, but then gratitude may be the best excuse for a party.
Jump, skip and hop into new and fun experiences – this was wisdom that bubbled to the top of nearly every conversation. Ms. Hurst recently joined a Japanese drumming group with “20 other crazy old ladies.” Ms. Foss runs in the woods so she can leap over logs like a kid; one of her friends recently threw a science-fair themed party that, naturally, involved slime.
Ms. Liburd has sky-dived, tried polo on horses, and fed owls at a wildlife refuge – and she never turns down a friend’s extra ticket, no matter how weird the event sounds. Her power move: “I’m always the first person on the dance floor. Somebody’s gotta do it.”
In adulthood, we stress too much about looking silly, Ms. Jovey says. She and her mom still blow bubbles in the backyard, revel in 30-minute sing-alongs in the kitchen, and will find any excuse to dance. “If the person on the street that I don’t know, and probably will never see again, thinks I’m weird for dancing with my mom because this brass band is playing randomly? Whatever. I’m going to have a beautiful moment.”
Gabrielle Foss backcountry skiing with friends near Squamish, B.C. 'The combination of a physical, mental and social challenge has been extremely rewarding and confidence-building.'Gabrielle Foss/Supplied
If you don’t make time for fun, “life just squeezes the opportunity out of you,” Ms. Foss says. “No one else is going to prioritize play for you because it’s not productive in a capitalist economy, you know?”
But don’t dismiss fun as superficial. Learning to worry less about what other people think helps stop the toxic comparisons that, according to years of psychological research, erode our sense of well-being. (Ideally, we’d also become less judgmental ourselves.) Having fun together creates memories, eases tension and deepens friendships. “It fills your cup,” Ms. Liburd says. And it gives you a more solid base for the times when life gets serious.
Expressing gratitude. Pausing for reflection. Taking risks to be happy. Talking to strangers. Having fun. This group of Canadians endorse much of the science-based research on happiness, whether they know it or not. They describe warm, connected and meaningful lives created by being thoughtful about what matters most. And they’ve done it well enough that somebody noticed. In a world of angry distraction, surely that’s something to contemplate. Perhaps while blowing bubbles and dancing in the woods.